Barbie Kills the Bratz

From Slate: The Bratz dolls, a multibillion dollar line of dolls with pouty lips and dazed barbiturate-addled eyes that emerged from nowhere to utterly excommunicate the Barbie from the dreams and hopes and play patterns of millions of young lives, were actually concocted inside of Mattel's own design center! The line had been scrapped because Mattel didn't want to cannibalize its precious Barbie brand! Especially on Barbie's 40th birthday!! Ha ha, yeah, that strategy sure sucked! And no one within your executive suites even seemed to know about all this. The designer who'd sketched the original renderings upon which the Bratz were based was still working for Mattel—while another rogue designer who'd been on her team had ripped off the sketch and brought the idea to a scrappy little toy company up Highway 101 that would turn it into a multibillion-dollar powerhouse overnight. Read the whole Slate article "Five Ways Barbie Can Learn To Play With the Bratz" by Moe Tkacik here.

According to reporting from the UK Financial Times: Bratz dolls, the multi-ethnic and urban-styled rivals to Mattel’s more demure Barbie, have been ordered off the shelves of toy stores across America in a potential knock-out legal blow to their maker, MGA Entertainment.

A federal judge in California late on Wednesday ordered MGA to remove all 40 of the Bratz character dolls from retailers, in a further victory for Mattel in a long-running legal effort to crush the rival doll line.

The permanent injunction will not take effect until early next year, allowing the toys to stay in stores over the holiday shopping season.

MGA, which is privately held, said in a statement that it would appeal and seek to stop the enforcement of the order “so we can maintain the over 1,500 people that MGA employs, and continue to give our consumers a product they desire”. Read the whole FT article here.